264
PARTISAN REVIEW
the evil of the eXlstlOg system. The arms race, various "prestige"
projects, and the feeding of a top-heavy managerial and supervisory
apparatus aggravate the situation.
According to a restricted report, prepared by the Institute of
Economic Mathematics at the University of Novosibirsk, 95 percent of
the output of the machine tool industry feeds heavy industry, while
half the production of the consumer goods industry directly or
indirectly serves the needs of heavy industry.
Another very serious obstacle in the way of reforms and
democratization is the proliferation of management, inherent in any
nationalized economy.
Any reform in the Soviet Union must go hand in hand with
decentralization and, consequently, with a radical reduction of
managers. However, officials who are otherwise compliant balk when
their positions are threatened. Furthermore, as a result of numerous
miscarried reforms and countless broken pledges, Soviet society has
lost faith in the leaders' ability to achieve any reform; and this lack of
faith, in turn, makes efforts at reform more hopeless .
The last, and possibly the most important, obstacle to truly
democratic reform arises from the character and quality of the top
leadership. A potential Soviet Dubcek has very strong reasons to fear
that he will be removed, possibly even physically liquidated, as soon
as he reveals his intentions .
As a result of the whole of Soviet history, especially of the Stalin
era, a Party career has become so unpopular and repugnant that most
self-respecting people capable of doing anything else shrink from the
prospect . Potential reformers might find their way into the leading
circles, but they will hardly find much support there .
Social Support for Democratization
However, before reflecting on what a hypothetical Soviet
reformer could do, one has to examine the question of whether Soviet
society is ripe for democracy. If it is not , then-as Solzhenitsyn sees
it-it would indeed be senseless to institute anything approaching a
democracy.
In the Soviet Union today, the annual number of graduates from
institutes of higher education exceeds the total number of people
with higher education in tsarist Russia in 1917. But they are more
deprived of human rights and privileges than they were in old Russia.
